I've updated this thread for the last minute projections about Ivy Bridge. The biggest problem is that there have been so many previews that it is hard to be edgy with any predictions

Here are a few guesses about the areas of Ivy Bridge that have been somewhat less explored:

1. GPU: It looks like with the right drivers that Ivy on the desktop (77/95 watt TDP with HD 4000) will be close to high end Llanos but still does not beat Llano outright. It's a step up for Intel, but Trinity is about to launch so AMD has nothing to fear on the IGP front, especially on the desktop. The open source Linux drivers are apparently already quite mature, which is good news to a Linux user like me.

2. Overclocking: This may be Ivy Bridge's greatest "failure". From the early rumors it looks like Ivy Bridge *does* use less power, but there are thermal issues with getting heat out of the rather small die. That means that IB gets hotter than SB even though it is using less power. Apparently this isn't a problem for the crazy Liquid Nitrogen guys since they can still remove heat from the chip quickly, but overclocks using standard coolers may not be that impressive. That's not to say you can't OC an Ivy Bridge chips, just that you'll likely top out at about 4.5 Ghz instead of reaching 5 Ghz easily. This could be something that Intel can fix in the manufacturing process over time, so later Ivy Bridges will likely overclock better than the first batches to hit the market.

3. GPGPU: In Anandtech's review the IGP in Ivy Bridge beat Llano in exactly one task: GPGPU. Let's face it: Intel is a company that makes silicon for compute and Ivy may be surprisingly strong on this front. While Trinity will definitely have a graphics advantage, we'll see what Trinity can do on the GPGPU side. Frankly, GPGPU is less interesting since we are talking about integrated solutions and just about any serious GPGPU user is using a beefier discrete part.

4. The rest: It looks like equivalent model Ivy Bridges get approximately a 10% boost at stock speeds compared to their Sandy Bridge ancestors while also using less power. Is that particularly "exciting"? No. Is it pretty good? Yes. This is the first round of 22nm from Intel, and even though there have been delays, this is a much more ambitious launch & ramp than occurred with the 32 nm parts, where Gulftown was it for several months, followed by dual-core only Clarkdale parts.

On the CPU side: about what you'd expect. Small performance increase, but with a nice reduction in power consumption.

On the GPU side: Much bigger improvements (fortunately). As you can see, the 3770k is *not* beating a high-end Llano (the 3870K), *but* it is beating mid-range Llanos now *and* doing so in a much leaner power budget. That's the trick to Intel graphics: Intel knows full well that it can't compete with AMD when the GPU can get as much juice as it wants, but Intel is banking on really relying on the GPU in Ultrabooks where there isn't room & power budget for a big GPU. Since the Ultrabooks will have the same HD-4000 graphics, we've got a good idea as to what Intel can do on the GPU side. The real question is now: what can Trinity do when constricted to a 17 watt TDP?

Edit: The direct compute benchmark at the end of the review is an incomplete but very interesting glimpse into using Ivy Bridge's GPU as a compute tool. You'll see this is about the only benchmark were IB beats the LLano on the GPU side....

Last edited by chuckula on Sun Apr 22, 2012 8:35 pm, edited 4 times in total.

One other point: The graphics drivers used are obviously not the final production drivers. Having said that, I wouldn't expect any miracles at this point on the performance side, so the numbers seem legitimate. I don't expect miraculous driver releases from Intel in the same way I don't expect miraculous OS patches for Bulldozer, you get what you get.

Do you guys know if intel is currently developing a next gen processor or is it going to stick with the i7 range,currently it's latest is 28nm is it going to go down to say 18nm or is intel plateaued? I'm not too great at explaining things.

Just read the anand and so it's 22nm,ok but are they developing the next range or are they?

I was just wondering as i read somewhere about 4 years ago that they could only go down so far before they have to change to a different system and that they have probably 5 generations before they are stuck for something new.

One of the biggest things I noticed was how little idle power consumption has changed.

If you're constantly using your desktop, Ivy Bridge will be big there, you'll see decent power savings under load.

If you're an evening/weekend gamer, maybe not so much, depending on your usage.

I'm still tempted and all (partly as it would be a drop-in replacement), though I shouldn't be . If you're regularly doing video encoding/transcoding that can harness QuickSync, the increase in performance is amazing. Also, if the Core i3 comes with a decent version of Intel HD graphics (at least the HD 2500) or if the Core i5-3330 comes out at a great price for budget builds, they'll be hard to beat for systems for friends and family who don't need a lot of graphics horsepower.

Another un-sanctioned engineering sample out in the wild. This one is interesting because they OC'd both the new Ivy Bridge chip and the Sandy Bridge chip to identical 4.7Ghz clockspeeds and did clock-for-clock benchmarks. The IB chip usually wins by a small but consistent margin with a couple of small regressions here & there. Unfortunately, this review doesn't include temps or power consumption. I would be *very* interested to see how the power & thermals compare between these chips with a decent overclock.

Another un-sanctioned engineering sample out in the wild. This one is interesting because they OC'd both the new Ivy Bridge chip and the Sandy Bridge chip to identical 4.7Ghz clockspeeds and did clock-for-clock benchmarks. The IB chip usually wins by a small but consistent margin with a couple of small regressions here & there. Unfortunately, this review doesn't include temps or power consumption. I would be *very* interested to see how the power & thermals compare between these chips with a decent overclock.

This was exactly the kind of comparison I was hoping for. I think I'm a lot closer to making up my mind on Ivy Bridge. Does anyone know of a similar clock-for-clock comparison between an 2500K and a 2600K (or any Sandy Bridge i7)?

One of the biggest things I noticed was how little idle power consumption has changed.

no offense or anything but I'm not sure that could be any less exciting if it had changed let alone that it hasn't.

It's not offensive that idle power consumption is not interesting to you, but it is surprising. Idle power consumption is more important than load power consumption to the great majority of computer users whether they realize it or not. Most computers spend the majority of their lives at idle. Even our virtual machine host server at work - currently running 4 virtual machines concurrently - sit's all day at about 10% CPU. I just opened up my task manager now and my CPU is wavering from 0 to 15% - and I've got a virtual machine running here too.

This was exactly the kind of comparison I was hoping for. I think I'm a lot closer to making up my mind on Ivy Bridge. Does anyone know of a similar clock-for-clock comparison between an 2500K and a 2600K (or any Sandy Bridge i7)?

Yes, the clock for clock comparison is very surprising; The Anand article gave me a greater impression that IB was a bigger clock 4 clock improvement over SB than the VR-Zone article. Oh well. I wonder if IB overclocks better at stock voltage than SB. And I wonder if the 77 series chipsets are going to be especially interesting in any way.

Interesting comments from a AMD user.Did you forget it is just a die shrink of SB with the new 3d trigate tech,Native USB3support,PCI-E 3.0 and improved graphics and quicky sinky.From what i have read the new 3d gating vastly improves power flow by increasing the area electrons can flow,but also increases the ability to stop electron flow better.They did not say it would be faster. IB is all about power conservation and on top of it all they can make much more chips per wafer making intel more money. The graphics are much better then SB I imagine the 22nm graphics will overclock much better then 32nm along with the cpu core too.

I do not think you will need anything bigger then a coolermaster hyper 212 EVO to cool these new chips at 5ghz.For anyone who has not upgraded to SB yet IVY is the way to go. But one thing is for sure i know i will not be replacing my 2600k with a IVY cpu even though its the same socket.I would love lower power/better overclocking and a 5% increase in cpu power @ the same GHZ.But its just not worth it to upgrade over SB.

Now you and your PhenomII well thats a different story all together........Let me ask you this?When you finally upgrade your old amd design what would you pick IVY or SB?? ...........btw this is my first intel chip,I am no intel fanboy.I love AMD .Its just when built this rig in april i wanted something future proof and for once in my PC computing life it still performs at the top of the pack.Unlike builds from years past i stayed on top for a few months at best.I am going on a year baby and it still kicks aZZ:)I built it at the perfect time,it still impresses me compared to AMD and previous Intel Tech.

Ohh Flip If you look a at Andthentechs article you can see they do not even show the 2700k,just the 2600k so that extra 100mhz The IVY chip has over the 2600k is a bit unfair, so it kinda skews the charts making ivy look alot better then the other Overclocked article does.

This was exactly the kind of comparison I was hoping for. I think I'm a lot closer to making up my mind on Ivy Bridge. Does anyone know of a similar clock-for-clock comparison between an 2500K and a 2600K (or any Sandy Bridge i7)?

Yes, the clock for clock comparison is very surprising; The Anand article gave me a greater impression that IB was a bigger clock 4 clock improvement over SB than the VR-Zone article. Oh well. I wonder if IB overclocks better at stock voltage than SB. And I wonder if the 77 series chipsets are going to be especially interesting in any way.

They used only benchmarks that favor lots of multi-threading. Hence the 3960x coming out looking better than it usually does. Perhaps this means Ivy has stronger gains in single threaded performance.

It's not offensive that idle power consumption is not interesting to you, but it is surprising. Idle power consumption is more important than load power consumption to the great majority of computer users whether they realize it or not. Most computers spend the majority of their lives at idle.

I don't disagree with any of this but it comes across like anyone is supposed to care how much gas the new Dodge Dart turbo multi air engine is consuming at idle, do they care?... are "we" supposed to care about that now?... not how it performs on the road but how well it does while sitting in a drivethru? Unless consumption is egregious I'm not sure anyone outside of tree huggers who hate anything fun should care.

I don't know your specific circumstances, but most computers spend 99.99% of their life "in the drive thru". So the power consumption characteristics that are operative 99.99% of the time are extremely important. Your situation could well be different if you're F@H or something. And I feel that load consumption is also extremely important, to quote myself from elsewhere:

Sometimes you need as much performance as you can get and you keep asking for more until you're limited by thermals. Video encoding, rendering, serious computational tasks - situations where time is money - those folks aren't going to give a spit about 65 watts or 130 watts as long as their tasks are getting done as fast as possible.

We were recently given an estimate of 1 month of compute time for a firm to give us a computer model of smoke venting from an atrium in the even of a fire. I don't know what kind of computer setup they had to do the job, but if that time could have been cut in half by going from a 65 watt quad core to a 130 watt 8 core, then somebody please run down to the store and buy up some 130 watt 8 cores.

I don't disagree with any of this but it comes across like anyone is supposed to care how much gas the new Dodge Dart turbo multi air engine is consuming at idle, do they care?... are "we" supposed to care about that now?... not how it performs on the road but how well it does while sitting in a drivethru? Unless consumption is egregious I'm not sure anyone outside of tree huggers who hate anything fun should care.

Actually, while maybe I don't personally care about it, "we" do. The proliferation of stop/start systems beyond just hybrid cars should indicate that. Technology that exists solely to improve idle fuel consumption. The analogies line up rather poorly anyway; there are local laws prohibiting "idling stop" for a certain duration or in certain zones, but I can't think of anywhere that I've been required to hibernate my laptop rather than leave it chilling at the desktop.

Now you and your PhenomII well thats a different story all together........Let me ask you this?When you finally upgrade your old amd design what would you pick IVY or SB??

[quote="ultima_trev"]On power metrics, Ivy, if it didn't cost too much VS Sandy. I care more about GPU performance though, so unless Kepler is amazing, my next build will probably be a 6 core Vishera+Pitcairn.

Humm you do know intel supports AMD gpus,plus we do not know what AMDs Vishera will bring to the table. Instead of being a loyal AMD customer i think performance vs price should rule everyone's purchases.If the price difference is minimal i would go with the most future proof choice.But to have top of the line gaming cpu power from intel no longer needs a 500+$ extreme cpu,you can get that now with a 2500k cpu that is well under 250$ sure its not a 2600k but the performance difference is minimal when it comes to gaming.But if you do highly multithreaded applications the 2600k outshines the 2500k by a good bit with its multithreading.I sure do hope Vishera kicks some butt but i just do not see it happening.Look how delayed bulldozer was and all the hype surrounding its release.Too bad it turned out to be a flop considering in my opinion it made intels presscott netburst mistake after watching its own competitor do the same thing when it was not king.After all those years and R&D on BD, they had to up the clocks so much that power use is pretty pathetic compared to its 45nm tech, on top of that the performance is pretty much the same as there latest incarnation of the phenom clock for clock.Then on top of that you had to pay a good bit more $ for them compared to there older Cpus. Like i said this is my first Intel desktop cpu since a old p2 300 and twin voodoo 2 8mb cards in sli.I used everything AMD has released except a BDozer cpu.All i can say is SB let alone IVY is a pretty killer upgrade to what AMD has now.So snappy and quick i don't think i have done anything to make it ever pause to think.Even while encoding a video.Seems to me the only thing that will slow it down is waiting on your hard drive if your doing 2 specific HD tasks on the same drive.So i do enjoy putting different hard drive specific programs on separate drives to stop that problem.But i do not consider myself a power user,i don't fold or run any VMs but i still wish i had the money for 2 big fat solid state drives they are so fast nowadays I would not even think of having a raid setup,i don't feel its worth it as fast as today's SSD's fly.

Relatively speaking SB --> IB on the CPU side of the chip is a smaller update performance-wise than Conroe --> Penryn was. There are some non-performance related goodies in IB like the high-speed hardware random number generator and PCIe 3.0 that are pretty nice features though. On the GPU side, IB is definitely a big step up from SB (obviously the GPU was not a part of Conroe or Penryn so it's hard to equate the two).

Relatively speaking SB --> IB on the CPU side of the chip is a smaller update performance-wise than Conroe --> Penryn was.

That's what I was getting at. I think ultima_trev and myself were hoping for a little more bump on the IPC. No biggie. Lower load power and higher OCing are good news, but it sounds like IB is nothing to make anyone with an SB feel like they need to upgrade. The GPU improvements are mostly meaningless to me, but good to see anyway.

So at this point we're a year away from the world-changing Haswell, yes?

I would take it a step farther and say that if you have a first-gen Core i5 or Core i7 and if SB didn't make you want to upgrade, you can probably skip IB.

Yep. As for me, the X4 955 seems to be doing just fine in performance terms, I'm RAM limited on a DDR2 motherboard DDR2 RAM prices are insane compared to DDR3, and even then I'm limited to 16 GB. So for me it's a question of swallowing hard and buying an AM3 motherboard and DDR3 and saving money, or going all in and doing a CPU upgrade, when essentially all I need is more RAM. My plan is to wait it out as long as I can and do the full upgrade when the time comes. That will also allow me to keep the current parts all together as an essentially functioning computer, minus some important things like a case and a DVD drive and a video card (use the yucky integrated 785G).